In highly-automatic progressive die systems having means for fast feeding blanks onto a receiving station, mechanisms for rapid progressive transfer of the blanks from working station to working station along the tooling lane, and means for quick-receiving the finished articles discharged therefrom, down-time for tooling repair or change can be very costly for what is generally a capital-intensive operation because generally the entire tooling system must be removed from the press. This is true whether the shutdown be because of mechanical difficulties or because a change of tooling is desired.
There is thus an established need for a quick-change system which minimizes the labor required for making changes of lane-type tooling in high-productivity tooling systems, particularly of the kind employed for can-end manufacture.